Movie Season

Now that films get watched at home instead of cinemas, and a theatrical release is essentially a publicity stunt that a film must go through to get reviewed by critics and talked about by people like us, it only makes sense that “serious cinema” season is getting shorter and shorter. Like baseball in the post-wild card era, a film just has to get hot at the end of the year, pick up some awards and live a successful life on streaming and cable.

Not that it’s a completely bleak situation. While we’re waiting for this year’s crop of films that will jockey for the Oscar brand, the cinemas need to show something, so a little indie gem such as Blue Ruin, which had no big names and therefore wasn’t really going to be a contender anyway, can get a spring release without the established independent film names to crowd it out.

Starting this month, however, it is fully on. Between now and the end of the year, there will be new films from P.T.Anderson, Mike Leigh (doing period again, no less), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Turk who made Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, among others.

More than any of these, though, I am looking forward to the new film from Andrey Zvyagintsev, Leviathan. Can’t wait!